


Hands Who Felt Like Mine

by OrionLady



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Epic Friendship, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 05:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrionLady/pseuds/OrionLady
Summary: A rival organization rears its ugly head and captures Jack. Not all torture involves blood. Even rescued, some scars can’t be seen. A story of psychological healing and pancakes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Sara Bareilles’ “Once Upon Another Time.”

“_Once upon another time somebody’s hands who felt like mine turned the key…was free._” ~Sara Bareilles

The diner was something straight out of a thirties talky film. A yellow and red awning bowed to visitors as they passed the grungy San Francisco street corner.

Curls got jostled in the late March breeze. They fanned over a long double breasted coat unbuttoned like blue monarch wings. The man had shaved, but patches of stubble stained the window of his face—

He’d shaved in a hurry.

He didn’t go into the diner, instead jogging to the side of the building where he spotted a taller man leaning against an idling Lexus.

Dylan spread his hands. “What is this _Man From Uncle_ crap? Your letter was in fricking _invisible ink._”

Thaddeus Bradley smiled. “Good to see you too, Shrike.”

“How’s retirement suiting you? I didn’t peg you for a San Francisco guy.”

“Beaches and culture,” said Bradley. “What’s not to love?”

A tiny grin finally squeezed through the worried lines on Dylan’s face. Thaddeus opened his arms and they shared a quick embrace.

“But seriously,” Dylan insisted, stepping back, “your message sounded like we’re about to die or something.”

Thaddeus’ face dropped. He cinched his lips. “That’s what I’m trying to prevent.”

“Whoa. Wait.” Dylan blinked. Blinked some more. “We’re in danger?”

“I don’t know about us old puppeteers, but _they _are.”

Both men sobered. There was no need to say who _they _were. They were Dylan’s whole world. He softened just thinking about them.

He turned his back briefly, rubbing at that stubble while pacing. Thaddeus let him. The butterfly wings of Dylan’s lapels went breathless against a drop in the breeze.

“Who?” Dylan finally asked. “Because I don’t buy it that some bored law enforcement agency can track us down in London—”

“Ramses.”

Bradley said it quietly, with the inflection of someone on death row. Dylan’s whole body marbleized. After a furious few seconds, he scoffed.

“Ramses? And I thought we didn’t believe in fairy tales.”

Thaddeus thumbed at the brim of his hat. “We don’t.”

“Ramses is a myth!” 

“Like the Eye?”

Dylan spun to face him. “Ramses is an organization supposedly made up of the descendants of royalty. Using magic to kill, to sustain personal wealth. They’re like...the _evil_ version of what we seek to do. But what am I saying? They’ve never been confirmed.”

“Technically, neither have we.”

“Ramses is a bed time thriller my dad told me,” Dylan argued. “I’m not running from a ghost.”

“How about this?”

Thaddeus removed a manila envelope from his breast pocket. Photo copied surveillance photos were stuffed inside and he handed them to Dylan. They were mostly street shots—Daniel getting into a car, Merritt performing at a park, Alma grocery shopping. But a few were taken inside the observatory—Jack laughing at a joke, Dylan cooking. 

The earth grayed out. Sound permeated with an underwater quality. Dylan’s hands trembled with a yawning sense of helplessness. 

“There’s more where that came from,” said Thaddeus.

“How did you get these?”

“I’ve been tracking a post box here in the city. Men come and go, never the same person. Someone shipped this package from London the day I mailed you.”

Dylan nodded. Now the lack of a phone call made sense. Who knew what else these people had tapped.

“It’s all very cloak and dagger,” said Dylan. “Could be Interpol. They don’t always trust digital. It would explain why they physically mailed the photos instead of through USB or Cloud.”

Bradley shook his head and removed another photo. “I took this myself.”

At first the image looked black and white. Then Dylan realized it was raining in the picture. Close up and high resolution, the shot showed a man running down the street, umbrella in hand. 

Dylan’s mouth went dry. “No...”

“I’m afraid so.”

Both men stared at the insignia tattooed on the underside of the man’s arm. His coat had slipped down, revealing the Egyptian flail and crook. The sign of cruel dominion and power. 

The sign of Ramses. 

“It’s a coincidence,” said Dylan.

“This man picked up more photographs from the post box, just like these. They all showed the Horsemen.”

“An interested party, then. Someone who _happens_ to have that tattoo.”

“Dylan.” Thaddeus’ features softened. “Don’t put them in jeopardy over your denial.”

“Of course we’ll take precautions...but I’m not going to start scaring them over something that may not be real.”

Bradley just gazed at Dylan. 

“Why now?” Dylan wondered. “If it is a rival organization, then why not reveal themselves last year or before even?”

Thaddeus pointed at the photo of the observatory. “Before, your Horsemen were just trying to get enough money to eat. To survive. Make a name. Now…”

“They’re successful.” Dylan closed his eyes. “They’ve officially joined the Eye…with all its resources and influence.”

“They’ve aligned themselves with a heavy hitter, Dylan. In doing so, they’ve made an enemy of Ramses who would support people like Walter.”

“You think he was a part of Ramses?”

Bradley’s silence spoke for itself. 

“Well, that explains a lot,” said Dylan. He exhaled a big whoosh of air. “Okay. I’ll pack up the gang. Lay low.”

Thaddeus nodded. “Be careful, son.”

Dylan hugged him again. 

“It’s probably nothing. We’ll be laughing about Ramses in a week, tops.”

Thaddeus’ hooded eyes followed Shrike across the street.

“I hope so, Dylan. I hope so.”

* * *

Two days later, Alma and the boys had hastily thrown suitcases together after goodbye kisses from Bu Bu (“we’ll stay at the observatory and act like you’re still here”) and settled into a safe house—

Meaning Li and Bu Bu’s cottage.

It sat on the wooded outskirts of Boston. Nobody bothered to ask why the Chinese pair had a house in Boston. It was token with their crazy, beautiful lives now. The thing was all wood, a rustic cabin dumped in a green suburb.

It didn’t show up on satellites. There was no house number on it.

The front door opened into a spacious living room and combined kitchen. The ceiling hung low. It felt cozy, even with the eclectic furniture and portraits of Bu Bu with Nelson Mandela and on stage with Maria Callas. 

Dylan advised them to think of it like a vacation while they tried to get off the radar of “nosy parties.” 

“I still say we split up,” said Daniel when they finished claiming bedrooms. “Each of us could take a different country. We’d be harder to target. It’s the most logical plan.”

Jack and Merritt exchanged uneasy looks and said nothing. Two years ago and everyone would have gone in a heartbeat. Now…

“Yeah,” said Daniel, quiet, “I don’t like that plan either.”

“We stick together.” Dylan already had something sautéing on the propane stove. “It’s the only way we’ll make it.”

The three men were sober, silent. Coming out of anyone else’s mouth, the words sounded trite. After what they’d all lived through, together was the only thing that made sense. 

“Together” wasn’t a cheesy Hallmark card. It was fear and staunching blood and lying awake next to someone’s bed ready to ward off another nightmare and Merritt buying dill pickle dip instead of plain because he knew Daniel liked it.

“C’est bon. Au revoir.” Alma finished a phone conversation and switched back to English. ”I talked to my contacts at Interpol. They haven’t been investigating your cold case at all. Nor has Scotland Yard.”

Dylan met her eye. She nodded to his unspoken worry. Alma was the only person Dylan had told about Ramses, something that had slipped out one tear filled night.

Still, uncertainty saturated the air. It was a choking cloud around everything they did for the next five days.

No one turned on the black and white TV. They had left their cellphones in London, so as not to be tracked. Poker nights were hushed. Daniel put up thick drapes over his window when he realized his bedside light could be seen from the road. Jack’s sewing leg reached inhuman speeds. Merritt, horror of horrors, had actually gotten decent at card throwing. 

It was Alma—blessed, cherubic Alma—who brought their dramatic worries back down to Earth.

On the seventh morning, Alma glanced up from the open fridge, quirked an eyebrow towards Dylan and Daniel at the kitchenette, and said: “We’re out of food. We need a grocery run.”

Jack, asleep on the couch _again_ because apparently beds were overrated when you grow up living on back alley skids, didn’t get to appreciate the glory of Daniel’s never-seen panicked face. Merritt stumbled out of the bathroom, shaving cream on his chin. He swore and Jack startled awake.

“Whrsthefire, g’ys…”

“Not a fire,” said Daniel, throwing a towel to a gaping Merritt. “Civilization. People.”

“Even worse,” Merritt agreed.

Jack’s bleary gaze took in the room with one sweep. “Oh come on, people. I evaded feds for years. It’s easy. Crowds are probably the only safe place, really.”

They stared at him. 

“We can’t go out,” said Dylan to Jack patiently. “We’ll be recognized, photographed. Then our brief stint of being off grid is gone. I had enough hassle getting fake IDs for flying and shutting off airport cameras.”

“Can’t the grocery store deliver?” asked Merritt.

“I tried that.” Alma sighed. “We’re too far out.”

And here it was. One problem technology and magic couldn’t fix. 

“We’ve been bested by our mortality,” Merritt said with a philosophical rub of his wet chin.

“Shut up,” said Jack. “We have to go.”

“Why?!”

Jack rolled his eyes at Daniel. “Because I’m hungry. The end.”

“Jack is probably the least recognizable out of all of you,” said Alma. “Up until a few months ago he was dead. He’s not even in facial recognition data bases anymore. I checked.”

“Thank you.” Jack tugged on his boots. 

“Hold up.” Merritt held Jack’s leather jacket over his head. Even Jack jumping couldn’t reach it. “What happened to the buddy system? Surely, the _two_ of us are the least recognizable.”

Nobody agreed but the fierce light in Merritt’s eyes dared them to argue. 

“This is stupid,” Merritt said. His arms lowered and Jack snatched his jacket. 

“So is being hunted half way around the world by anonymous people,” said Jack. “But here we are.”

“Don’t _you _be stupid,” said Merritt.

A brilliant smile lit Jack’s face. His brows shot up. Dylan felt lighter just looking at it. “Is that supposed to be an insult or life advice?”

Merritt shrugged. “It is the only good advice Chase ever gave me. Now I bestow it on to you, a young protégé filled with scary life experiences and too much hair product. We only get one life to live and it is like the setting sun, rising even as it falls…”

Suddenly Daniel inserted himself in the middle of the huddle. He slashed his hands to either side. “Enough. Nobody is going anywhere. Not until you—” He jabbed a finger at Dylan. “—explain what’s going on. Who is after us?”

Dylan deflated, leaning against the counter. “We’re not sure they’re real.”

“Try me,” said Daniel.

“Ramses.” It was Alma who piped up, hands on her hips. “They don’t even use magic, necessarily, but they’re as old the Eye. They…well…they’re the opposite of you. They take from the poor to enhance the wealth of an elite few. In ancient Egypt this would’ve been royalty. They may have been _created_ for the sole purpose of defying the Eye.”

Dylan’s chest writhed. 

Merritt caught his eye. “Walter and Arthur.”

Dylan shrugged, shoulders heavy. “We have no proof they’re part of it, but even if they aren’t the fact we stripped them of status is enough to make enemies with Ramses.”

“I thought you said they weren’t real,” said Daniel.

“Myths don’t take surveillance photos.” Alma smiled without humour. “We’ve been tracked for weeks. I even found bugs in our cars.”

“It doesn’t matter who is after us,” said Dylan. “Until we find out their intentions, I’m not taking any risks.”

Daniel didn’t take his eyes off the floor. “And then what?”

Dylan frowned.

“What happens if they don’t go away?” Daniel continued. “What happens if we have to be on the run, in hiding, for the rest of our lives?”

“Wasn’t that always our life?” asked Merritt. 

“I don’t like running,” Daniel insisted.

“We didn’t have a choice.”

Daniel pointed at Dylan. “Because you chose for us.”

Alma’s eyes widened. She glanced around the room. 

“I didn’t make you go anywhere,” said Dylan quietly. “We have to stick together.”

“Guys?” Alma began.

“I agree,” said Daniel. “But that doesn’t mean we had to panic at the drop of a—”

“We’re like a heard of elephants,” Merritt interjected. “The four of us may as well wear a sign.”

“Guys—”

“This isn’t going to last,” said Dylan. “Okay? We’ll figure it out.”

“And what if we can’t—”

“_Taisez-vous_! Taisez-vous tout de vous!”

The three men whirled and promptly did as Alma ordered. Her cheeks were white. The wild rove of her eyes was something they’d never seen.

For all her hollering, when next she spoke, it was in a horrified whisper that raised hairs on their arms:

“Where’s Jack?”


	2. Chapter 2

Five hours, twenty two minutes, and four seconds. 

Five hours, twenty two minutes, and four seconds since Jack Wilder vanished without a sound. Left on his own to do what none of the others could face. 

“Selfless, stubborn martyr child,” as Daniel called him around hissed swear words. “Didn’t want to put us in danger.”

Five hours, twenty two minutes, and four seconds. 

Alma knew this exact number because Daniel had glanced at his watch the instant they realized. He insisted on reminding everyone of the time. Alma suspected it brought him an illusion of control. 

“Five hours, twenty two minutes, and fifty seconds.” 

A few phone calls later—“Oui, monsieur. I’m investigating the possible citing of a theft cold case suspect. Yes, I have my badge number right here…merci.”—and Alma had clearance to download footage from the last five hours. 

_And twenty six minutes and ten seconds_, she could practically hear Daniel add. 

By the time Merritt came back from a search of the rooms, face grey and hands a little shaky, Alma had used her tablet to scrub cameras in Boston.

Daniel hovered over her shoulder where she sat on the couch, sharp eyes scanning the boxes on screen. There were fifteen in total—all from around the nearest supermarket, almost an hour walk on foot. They played at a slightly faster speed. Alma ached for a sight of the young man. Luckily, the footage was in colour. She kept her eye on hair colour. 

Their argument had evaporated like a tropical storm. It felt like years ago already. Silence was a poisonous blanket over the living room. Their minds churned with worst case scenarios.

They’d had to physically hold Merritt back from just walking out the door and going after Jack. Hence, they’d sent him on a ‘mission’ to search the cottage instead. 

Dylan paced by the counter. His worried murmur to the Eye on a burner phone was the only sound. Alma’s finger swiping the screen was silent too. 

“Try camera seven,” said Daniel. “It’s right in front of the grocery store entrance. There! There he is!”

Immediately, all three were behind Alma and she scrambled to pause the footage. 

“G-Go back!”

Merritt and Dylan had the good grace not to look as shocked as they all felt by Daniel’s stutter. His long finger tapped at the rewind bar. Pulling it back, the crowds in the sunny parking lot writhed like ants. 

And then a leather jacket, hoodie underneath and half drawn over a familiar head of auburn locks, ducked across the bottom third of the camera’s scope. 

Merritt gasped. 

Jack’s cheeks were red from the nippy March winds. He’d put on a giant pair of sunglasses. His breath puffed in the Boston air. No patrons paid Jack any attention, small as he was. 

“Camera ten,” said Dylan.

Alma brought it up. 

A flower delivery truck pulled up to the curb. Two giant trolleys of sunflowers, easily eight feet high, were pushed from the ramp and into the grocery store. The manager greeted them warmly. 

The trolleys going by only took four seconds. 

By the time they cleared, Jack was gone. There was no footage on camera two—the one directly inside the market lobby—of him going in with the flowers. The truck disappeared in a curious rush. 

A fresh blood patch adorned the pavement where the flowers had gone by. Jack’s blood. 

Daniel cried out.

* * *

Alma’s earliest childhood memory was going to the cinema with her parents on a December night. 

The film was long, sleep inducing. But there was one scene, one profound scene that she’d woken in time to witness. The two main characters were about to jump from a bridge into freezing waters. They spread their arms, doves about to fly. The film had slowed to almost nothing. 

Edith Piaf’s “Non Je Ne Regrette Rien” had played in the background. It was so stark—the triumphant music while Alma waited, tortured, for the two men to hit the water. A fuzzy arena of countless emotions. Halting, exquisite. Alma hadn’t experienced that insular place since she was three years old. 

Until now. 

Another thirty minutes later and they tracked the flower truck to an abandoned four-storey on the river. It was easy, the truck passing routinely by traffic cameras. For Alma, it was a silent horror.

This time, _she _was the one waiting to hit the water. 

They all were. 

“_Balayés pour toujours_...” That song warbled endlessly in Alma’s brain. 

A tornado of activity preceded the Horsemen’s rush to grab a cab, weapons, and coats. Nobody cared if they were caught on the grid now. Their pursuers already knew they were in Boston.

They made it to the building. 

It took almost an hour to find Jack, despite the building’s absence of furniture and windows.

They actually passed right by him the first time in their rampage up to the third floor. The black leather of his coat, combined with the fact he sat crumpled just outside an open door like a melted mannequin, made it so that only Alma’s nose recognized him.

“Jack!”

Under the leather lurked a stench of vomit and blood. Wide metal cuffs locked his wrists together. Splotchy black bruises marred his face and neck.

Merritt knelt.

Daniel and Alma both stiffened, braced for the snide one-up sure to follow. Merritt’s eyes were carefully blank, but his brows met in a conflicted embrace.

He took off his hat and held it to his chest. More reverent than any of them had words for. They were spellbound.

Merritt’s face suddenly went a brilliant shade of white and reflected spots of domineering fluorescent lights overhead.

The truth of that, what Alma was seeing, took a long time to hit home. When it did, her heart skipped several beats. Daniel gasped. Dylan did a kind of blinking double take—

Merritt was crying.

Merritt McKinney, greatest hypnotist and mind reader in the last fifty years, callous hermit by all appearances, embittered by his brother’s betrayal, was crying.

Silent tears. Utterly silent. If the moment hadn’t been such a nuclear bomb drop, Alma might have wondered about that. Even Jack wasn’t crying.

He shivered, though.

Shivered like the Arctic Circle had descended on Manhattan. Enough to be audible where his teeth met each other. Despite the chill of the abandoned building, it was clear the boy’s shivering had nothing to do with temperature.

“Merritt?” Daniel’s voice came out as small as Alma felt.

The mentalist opened his mouth, but it was Jack’s panicked mantra that answered. They jumped.

“Won’t come off. They—they won’t—I tried everything but they…won’t come _off_.” He tugged at the fused, forearm length manacles, They were made of tarnished brass or bronze. Jack’s bloody fingers twitched and they finally saw what he gripped.

“Why won’t it work?” he wailed.

Merritt gently took the lock picks from Jack. He’d shed fresh tears in the meantime. Like melted ice. His wide palm stilled Jack’s efforts. “Jack, stop.”

“It’s…I’ve tried everything,” Jack insisted. He kept looking down. Alma wasn’t sure if he even realized they were here. 

“I know you did.” Merritt’s hand moved to Jack’s neck. He squeezed, careful to avoid the bruises, and wrestled back a throat-thick noise. “You’re a good kid, Jack.”

“No. I’m a failure.” Jack turned his face away. Shame rolled off him like a contagious nausea. 

Merritt’s eyes blanked. Completely shut off. Somehow it was a gesture of more emotion than anything thus far. 

“Cement, Jack.” Dylan darted forward at Merritt’s proclamation. He squinted at the manacle lock. His entire body went rigid. “Someone cemented the lock. It’s not your fault you couldn’t pick it. Not to mention you’re drugged up to your eyeballs. You even got out of that jail cell of a room. Pretty good for a bad day, son.” 

They hit the water. 

The air left Alma in a slow wave. Freezer burn, that’s what they called this feeling. It was the only English equivalent that came close to the agony inside her chest. 

_They…they gave him picks and a wide, easy lock, knowing he would fail. That he’d try and try and never get free. _

Dylan couldn’t hold back any longer. He’d put up a valiant effort so far. But the sight of such psychological cruelty buckled him and he knelt. 

He wound an arm around Jack’s shoulder and touched his forehead to the sleight’s. A shudder rolled through Jack. He gasped, coming up for air.

He blinked and his eyes focused at last. Dylan gripped him harder. 

Alma suddenly felt the weight of their gravity, of how much these four men had banded together in her absence, how much she’d missed. Every little moment of bonding. The comforting touches and the respect for each other’s demons they hadn’t had three years ago. 

She hadn’t been there for the London/China fiasco, had only just begun spending more time with them. Now she felt like the intruder. 

Jack frowned. He glanced around, the most lucid since they’d found him. Daniel murmured a quiet word about getting him out of the cold and to one of their private doctors. Dylan nodded. 

“Ramses,” said Jack. “I overheard…demolition.”

“Ramses?” Dylan drew back. “They did this?”

Jack nodded, weak. 

Merritt, however, had more immediate concerns. “Demolition?”

Jack leaned forward, eyes wide. He would have toppled then and there if it weren’t for Merritt’s steadying hands. 

“Overheard them…condemned…”

“Who?” asked Alma. “Who did they condemn? Are they after one of us?”

Merritt sucked in a sharp breath. The sound was a gunshot in this cement space. “We walked into our own grave.”

“What are you talking about?” Daniel spluttered.

Dylan paled. “The building, its—”

The world became a blender. Walls and the ceiling cracked. The floor roiled under their shoes, enraged, snarling. Its broken teeth clamped together. 

Merritt threw himself over Jack. A dust tsunami had knocked the pork pie from his head. Alma lost sight of them when Daniel shielded her with his body. Dylan was a bridge over them all, as if paternal instincts alone could keep everyone unharmed. 

“_Non, je rien de rien…Non, je ne regrette rien…_”

Alma _did _see the demolition wrecking ball that sailed less than six inches from their heads. If she was uncomfortable, she couldn’t fathom how Jack felt. Sedatives plus the inability to move his arms, the pain. Merritt must have come to the same conclusion, for he muttered soothing words in their youngest’s ear.

A hand hauled on the back of Alma’s coat and all five surged towards the stairwell. 

Make that all _four_. After Jack’s knees crumpled in a second attempt to get up, Dylan slung him in his arms. He cradled the boy’s head on his chest. 

Hit after hit shook the building. They passed a window on the second floor and Daniel leaned out. He waved his arms at the wrecking ball driver. 

“Hey! Stop! There are _people_ in here!”

Instead of a panicked flurry of activity from the crew on the ground, a chorus of ribald laughter met their ears. Their upturned hands all had flail and crook tattoos. Shrike and Daniel shared a look. 

“Ramses,” said Merritt. “They’re even better connected than we are. Points for that.”

“Move!” shrilled Dylan. He was eight steps ahead before they did just that. 

Their fleeing was all adrenaline and arms keeping each other from tripping and backwards glances and shrieking and—

_I don’t miss this part_.

Then again, being trapped in a condemned building while a sadistic, rival organization tried to kill them, using Jack as mentally tortured bait, was a first. This was an ante of danger even they’d never faced. 

They slammed open the stairwell doors and flew across the front entrance lobby. The doors were glass, granting a perfect view of the street—safety—beyond. Just a few sprint-strides away. 

The first explosion tore a hole not ten feet from Dylan’s shoe. He roared, shielding Jack’s head from spraying debris. Daniel’s young legs made it outside first. 

He held the door open and scooped an arm at them. “Come on! _Go_!”

Merritt shoved Dylan through, then Alma. Detonations rocked the foundation. The floor fell into nothing. 

Alma turned back. Her eyes widened. She had a hand out and buried in Merritt’s lapel before her eye could blink.

If she hadn’t yanked him out and thrown him to the sidewalk, he’d have died in that half second. A fuse burst where he’d stood. Merritt blinked at Alma from where he lay prone. Alma gazed back. Both quaked and Alma had never seen the man so shaken in his life.

A bullet whizzed off the sidewalk. 

“Oh come on,” Daniel snapped. “Is the persistence really necessary?”

Apparently it was, because three more bullets followed the first. The demolition crew held rifles now, poised at the Horsemen.

“We should be flattered we’re worth all the attention,” Merritt breathed, but it fell flat. 

An SUV squealed up to the curb. Dylan fumbled to grab the gun in his waistband without dropping Jack. Daniel didn’t even try. Alma already had her hands up. They were dead men walking. 

The passenger window rolled down and Li’s sweating face appeared. “Hop in! We gotta move.”

Alma had never felt such relief. They cattle piled in the back, a tangle of arms and coats, while Daniel sat up front and directed Li around the gunmen. 

“Radio ahead,” said Dylan. He stroked Jack’s head in his lap. “Tell the Eye we need a doctor. And maybe a welder.”

“What—?” Li twisted around in the driver’s seat. He honed in on Jack’s wrists and colour drained from his face. “Oh no.”

* * *

“Nothing more we can do.”

Those words never got easier to hear. Not when mothers died, not from lawyers when brothers scammed the other out of life savings, not when a neglected _kid_ wore manacles that made his wrists a red fountain. 

“But the sedative is already wearing off. It hasn’t done any lasting damage,” the Eye doctor added.

Dylan thanked the man and shook his hand. Then it was just the four of them standing in the cottage living room, gathered in a half circle around the Chesterfield where Jack sat slumped.

Everyone was coated in gyprock and explosive powder. Li and Bu Bu had left to buy supplies—and maybe a pry bar. 

Merritt hoped it didn’t come to that. He perched on the coffee table across from Jack. 

Stitches lined a gash on his eyebrow and an electric heating pad got to work on bone-deep bruising in brushstrokes along his back. But they only had eyes for the cuffs. 

Five of the greatest minds in magic history and none of them had a clue how to get cement-jammed manacles off this skinny street rat without amputating both hands. 

Not even remotely an option.

“The lock is wide, almost mockingly so,” said Daniel. “It’s like something out of the forties. What if we just pick at the cement? Break it off in chips?”

“The tumblers are damaged,” said Dylan, hand over another cellphone conversation at his ear. “Even if we get it cleared, there’s no guarantee they’d open.”

“Laser?” suggested Alma. “We’re in the manufacturing district. They’d have laser cutters.”

“I have something a little more portable.”

They turned. Thaddeus stood in the doorway. At the sight of Jack, he took off his hat. One hand held a canister with a metal nozzle. The other fingered his fedora, a flat metal rod, and a mallet.

“Thanks for coming so quickly.” Dylan’s soft voice tightened something in Merritt’s throat. 

“Ramses acted faster than we ever imagined,” said Bradley. “A mistake we won’t repeat.”

Merritt shifted to make room for Thaddeus on the coffee table. Thaddeus’ face fell. At the sight, a fierce chill gripped the room. Even Jack felt it, for he shivered. Dylan rushed to drape another blanket around him and upped the heating pad’s dial. 

Thaddeus waited until Jack’s restless eyes met his. “Mr. Wilder, we’re going to get you out of these. Do you trust me to do that?”

Jack’s irises shifted a little, searching Bradley’s face. Thaddeus let him, as long as he wanted. 

“I’m not like those men,” Bradley said. “I want to help. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Jack’s brows drew back. That icky feeling in Merritt’s throat constricted. 

_You can trust us. We’re not tricking you like they did._

Jack nodded. At all of them.

Everyone exhaled noisily and tension released. Not all of it, but enough for Merritt to discern hope at the end of this hellish tunnel. 

Thaddeus held up the canister. “This is—”

“Liquid nitrogen,” Jack croaked. 

“Indeed. Hold still for a minute.”

High pitched sprays were the only sound for a stretch. Veins appeared on the cuffs, icing it enough for Merritt to see his reflection and Daniel’s worried face over his shoulder.

Jack, normally so easy to read, now wore a white washed stare. For the first time, Merritt had to work to see all the emotions behind that thick curtain. He settled a hand on the boy’s knee, more for his own sake.

With the room so quiet, everyone jumped at a tinny hiss. Alma’s hand flew to her heart. 

“It’s alright. That’s just the air escaping.” Thaddeus reached for the rod and mallet. “Now comes the hard part. This is going to be uncomfortable, okay?”

Jack nodded, as if he’d expected this. Dylan brought over the door jam, a knee high iron dragon. He tipped it onto its side and set it on the coffee table.

Ever so gently, Dylan pulled Jack’s wrists to rest on the iron. He stroked the abused fingers once with his thumbs before letting go. Thaddeus rested the rod on the cement. His mallet swung into the air. 

“We’re here,” said Daniel.

Alma smiled. “It’s just like another escape act.”

“You’ve got this, Jack,” said Dylan.

Merritt, marveling at his own inability to speak, squeezed Jack’s knee. 

_WHAM! _The first hit struck true. Jack winced, eyes clenched and lips tight. 

_WHAM!_ Thaddeus pounded again. 

Jack’s hands began to shake. Merritt grasped those too. 

“Come on,” Thaddeus muttered. Merritt shared his prayer.

_WHAM!_


	3. Chapter 3

_CL-KR-PRSH-SHING!_

The tumblers snapped in a messy rush. Dylan didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until Alma huffed a laugh. 

The manacles had broken clean in two. A pair of invisible hinges released.

Daniel lunged to tear them clean off but Dylan frantically blocked his arm. “No! You’ll rip his frozen skin!”

Jack’s breaths came quick and deep. He didn’t look at any of them. His brows worked under a seeming weight. Thaddeus brought over a teapot from the stove and poured warm water into the space between Jack’s skin and the metal.

“Will he need a skin graft?” Dylan’s voice came out calmer than he felt.

Thaddeus shook his head but it didn’t allay the horror of the cuffs being peeled back and seeing Jack’s wrists like a rosin fresco. The orange and pink smears were almost beautiful. 

Jack saw them too. He hid his face in his shoulder. 

“Alright,” said Dylan, eyes never leaving Jack. “Everyone out. Give us the room.”

Daniel followed Bradley upstairs. Alma, however, cupped Dylan’s face in a quick kiss. 

“We’re here,” she whispered. “All that is left is for us to show Jack that.”

Dylan nodded. She handed him the medical duffel, wandering away, and crackling stillness fell. Dylan took Thaddeus’ vacated spot on the coffee table. He hadn’t expected Merritt to leave and the man didn’t disappoint. 

The couch was an overstuffed thing, all tweed and wool. Out of place in the Chinese decor. It nearly swallowed Jack and Dylan wondered that the boy could look so soft in so much leather. 

Dylan flung the manacles across the room. They landed against the wall with a metal thud.

That felt better.

Merritt’s fingers twitched. Dylan could feel the scaly monster of his fury in every facet of the room, roiling, seething, riding on storm thunder to devour. 

In the eye of that storm was Jack. 

Dylan had never been floored by such control before. Merritt’s control on Jack’s behalf. 

_Maybe that’s the secret_, Dylan realized. 

Jack had experienced nothing but the self centered cruelty of others for most of his life. Merritt _knew _this. It was almost painful to watch Merritt funnel all of his energy into keeping any trace of anger away from a vulnerable Jack, who might not be able to tell the difference. Merritt took his hands off Jack to clench them on his knees.

Dylan, throat thick, distracted himself by turning Jack’s wrists this way and that. A limp Jack let him do whatever he wanted. Dylan absurdly wished he’d slap him, fire up.

_No stitches needed, that’s good._

Dylan squeezed a cold pack, wrapped it in a gauzy pad, and rested it on the sleight’s wrists. This garnered a tiny hiss—a full three seconds later.

_Slight chance of nerve damage. _

Silver sulfadiazine cream and two layers of taped bandages later and Jack looked like a mummy. The roll of gauze went around and around. Just like winding a clock. Nothing could be seen but white from the knuckles up—his card hands would be out of commission for a few weeks.

Dylan held a syringe of morphine up to the light. Jack blanched. His knees tightened, ready to bolt. He eyed the two men with betrayal, a cornered animal.

Merritt’s lightning finally struck. 

“_No_,” he said, and it oozed rage.

Dylan stiffened, eyes saucers.

_He’s already terrified, Merritt. Don’t shove him away._

“No.” Merritt’s rebar tight jaw gave a quiver and readjusted. “You are with _us _now, Jack. Over my dead body does someone lay a finger on you or so much as pluck a hair from your head. You got that?”

All Jack did was stare. Tension mounted. He seemed to be apprising the eighth wonder of the world. The sleight understood almost the exact second that Dylan did.

Merritt’s anger was a raw, righteous brand. With it, the room became a steel shell—utterly solid and ready to defend.

Utterly safe.

_Safe_.

Jack’s body lolled forward. It was slow motion, because apparently he was still fuzzy on whether he was free or not. His forehead landed on Merritt’s left shoulder, arms in a self-hug. 

Dylan dropped the syringe. 

Merritt was a puppet paralyzed. Cut free from his strings. His hands hovered out to either side and his jaw hung slack. Incredulous eyes stared at the dirty top of Jack’s head. Now _he _was the one scared. He hadn’t known or given much brotherly affection since Chase.

One arm lowered first, a ballet position shakily executed. Then the other. The hands were the first thing to make real contact, breaking the invisible bubble. They snaked around Jack, arms overlapping the boy’s.

Merritt tightened his hold and the leather creaked. 

“Alright then,” he wheezed. “Just so we’re clear.”

Merritt didn’t weep, exactly, but Dylan sensed the shedding of his emotions. A chrysalis of Merritt’s preconceived defenses unraveled at their feet. It was stunning.

“I’d tip my hat to you,” said Merritt, “if I still had it.”

“That’s b…because I have it.”

Jack slurred out the words, but the hand he reached into a hidden pocket of his coat was steady. A crumpled grey pork pie appeared. 

Merritt’s breath choked. He nestled the hat on his head and cupped the back of Jack’s hair. His fingers tangled in the auburn ripples. They rocked back and forth.

“Stupid kid.”

Even from where Dylan sat, he could see the dimpled smile on Jack’s face. 

“We’ve got you,” said Dylan. “We’re not leaving.”

Merritt chimed in with the quickest of pecks to Jack’s temple. It was the most shocking thing that had happened in Shrike’s day. 

He grinned through fat tears escaping down his chin.

* * *

By the time Dylan came back with towels, Jack was wearing a pair of Daniel’s swim trunks. The black fabric hung too big for his bony hips. He sat on the side of the bathtub. It was already filled with steaming water.

Dylan hid a smile at Jack’s modesty, despite six years spent homeless.

Jack shrugged with a faint grin, reading this thought on Dylan’s face. “You know what they say. Modesty is a commodity.”

Dylan was quiet for a minute, taping two clear plastic bags over Jack’s hands. The others had already showered. Gyprock footprints led in and out of the shared bathroom. 

Dylan met Jack’s eye while he took off his blazer. “I’m more worried about you falling asleep and drowning.”

“Mother hen,” Jack muttered. 

_Can’t argue with that. _

“I know you’re hungry, but I figured…”

“Yeah. I just want this gunk off me.”

Dylan nodded. Though there was little dirt on Jack, there was plenty evidence of human hands, not to mention vomit and blood. The boy turned to dip in the water and tears sprang to Dylan’s eyes. The boy’s skin was a mess of goose eggs, of shallow cuts done in moments of petty superiority. 

_He was made to feel small. Powerless._

By the time Jack immersed himself in the soapy water, Dylan had composed himself. Not being able to bathe without help was indignity enough. Dylan knelt on the mat. 

Jack kept his arms away from the water while Dylan worked shampoo through the tangled hair. Blood and grime darkened the bath water. 

“They grabbed you at the supermarket? Dressed like flower guys?”

Jack nodded, blinking slowly. “Knocked me across the face with a tire iron.”

Magician’s hands were good for something here after all—they never stuttered, though Dylan’s heart did.

He squeezed body gel onto a face cloth and lathered it. The fabric barely touched Jack’s deltoids and the skin around his rotator cuff, but Jack flinched all the same. Water splashed over the edge. 

Jack flushed. “Sorry.”

Dylan looked him dead in the eye. “If I ever hear that word from your mouth again, I’ll have Merritt sit on you.”

Jack smiled, tired yet earnest. “Deal.”

Feather light was the contact, down and around and back up, and after a few rounds of the foamy cloth Jack stopped bracing for a hit he finally realized would never come. He sank into the water, a full inch deeper than before.

Dylan cupped the back of Jack’s neck until he settled, holding it upright for him.

Dylan cleaned his toes, the back of his knees, the underweight pockets of his clavicle. He wrung out the cloth over Jack’s head, hand cupping over his brow so it didn’t run into the sleight’s stitches. Jack’s lashes tickled Dylan’s palm.

“You get a good look at anyone?”

Jack shook his head. “Can we not talk about it?”

“Sure. Sorry.”

Jack popped open an eye. “Is that a double standard I hear?”

Dylan tweaked his ear, grinning along. 

Jack could barely keep his lids open, so Dylan poked him until he hauled himself out of the water and onto the closed toilet seat. Dylan unwrapped the plastic bags and Jack’s eyes, groggy, became razor sharp when he felt large hands near his wrists. 

Dylan ignored the mistrust in favour of slinging a towel around Jack. He scrubbed it up and down Jack’s hair. Spikes reached up in all directions.

“Thanks, Dylan. For…everything.”

Dylan sat back on his heels. Both men dripped, sopping wet, goose flesh on their arms. Shrike thought suddenly of his father, of the time he’d taught Dylan to swim. His curls had stuck up like that too.

“Anytime, Jack. You mean more to me than you’ll ever…”

Jack listed to the side, into the sink. Fast asleep.

Dylan’s features melted. 

“‘Mother hen.’ Guilty as charged, you crazy kid.”

_My crazy kids._

* * *

The next two weeks passed like molasses: slow and sweet. Cloying afternoons passed reading or working on new tricks.

Jack slept more than they expected. For the first four days, he only emerged from his bedroom to stuff food in his mouth and use the washroom. If they were lucky, he’d reply to their greetings with a bandaged wave. 

Merritt routinely pelted him with popcorn on these occasions. 

Dylan and Thaddeus spent long hours at the table. Their voices remained low, but everyone knew they were figuring out how to stay off Ramses’ radar once they left the safe house. The table became a mosaic of maps and enemy profiles. 

When Jack’s blood pressure was high enough and he’d slept off the sedatives, he joined them for game nights. His old laughter and smiles were frayed but easy. He especially loved watching Thaddeus make a killing in Monopoly. Daniel helped Jack play because his hands could barely hold a spoon, let alone game pieces. 

The ninth day, the bandages came off. 

“They need air to heal,” Dylan explained. 

The wounds were almost mended, but the bracelet thin scars would probably never fade and if they did it would take years. At least the muscle and dexterity were still intact. The dice Jack had thrown back at Merritt’s head with marksman-like accuracy proved that. 

Sometimes, late at night, when everyone else had gone to bed and Merritt found Jack sitting on the floor of the kitchen, he’d take one wrist and rub aloe on it. Then the other one.

Jack would nod, vacant eyes sharp again. Merritt would ruffle his hair. They’d part ways without a word. 

In time, Jack stopped looking like a set extra from Oliver Twist. The fact he once ate half a cherry chocolate cheesecake in one sitting certainly didn’t hurt. Merritt pelted him with blueberries—“my cheesecake, you heathen!”—and hid a grin. 

Everyone decided to give the boy space. If Alma was caught hovering while Jack slept or Dylan cut up some of his food so it wasn’t hard to spear with a fork, well, no one had to know. Except Merritt. Because he saw everything.

So it came as no small shock when Merritt realized that it had been over two whole weeks and none of them noticed. Not even him.

Not a soul. 

Not one of them noticed.

It was made especially worse by the fact that _dust _had collected atop the worn pack of cards on Jack’s nightstand. Actual, movie style _dust_. Merritt took them out, sniffed the pack, muffled a swear word, and marched into the living room. 

These cards were Jack’s tick. He threw them, shuffled them. Merritt had learned to read the boy’s mood on cardistry alone.

“Think fast.” Merritt tossed them to Daniel, sitting on the couch. Daniel didn’t look up from a tablet. He caught the card pack flawlessly with his other hand. 

There was no risk of Jack overhearing this conversation because he was out for a walk with Li and Bu Bu. “Good for the blood!” Bu Bu always declared. Dylan and Alma had finally agreed to get out and have dinner somewhere. 

“What are you…?” Daniel glanced at what he had in his hand and sighed. “It’s not a big deal. He’s probably just in too much pain to try it.”

“He flipped pancakes this morning, Atlas. A pan is a whole lot heavier than a card.”

Daniel’s lips cinched. “Don’t push him.”

“He still hasn’t talked about it.” 

“They beat him and locked him in a room with restraints he’d never open. Would you?”

Merritt couldn’t answer that one. 

When Jack returned and saw the cards sitting on the coffee table, after supper, he blinked for a second and then clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Hey, man. I’ve been looking for these everywhere. Suppose I should practice to keep the skills in shape. Thanks.”

And he threw the ace of diamonds at an apple eight feet away on the counter and sliced a smile in it like it was nothing. Another card twirled across the fingers of his other hand. It wasn’t any slower than usual.

Merritt leaned back in his favourite Lazyboy in the corner. All was right with the world. 

He ignored Daniel’s long look and the quickly mouthed words—‘Jack lied.’

* * *

“No, you have to wait until the pancake gets to the edge of the pan and _then _flip.”

Merritt frowned. “That feels too late. It’s gonna fall.”

“It won’t. I promise.”

“You promise?”

“…Yeah.”

“Can I get that in writing?”

“Only if you flip it before I’m in a nursing home.”

Merritt’s brows climbed. “Is that a slur on my age?”

“Hey you went there, not me.”

“How about you have to eat it off the floor if I fail?”

“Those odds aren’t fair.”

“Excuse me?”

“Flip the dang pancake.”

Merritt and Jack sat at the kitchen table. Dylan wore an apron at the stove, back to them, and pretended not to love every second of this repartee. 

“Maybe it’s because you’re sitting down,” Jack offered. “Not enough momentum.”

Merritt jerked on the pan handle with both hands. It sailed over his head, beautiful and soaring, putting Gordon Ramsey to shame…

And landed on Dylan’s head. 

“You both lose,” said Dylan. He snatched the pan from Merritt and threw the offending pancake in the trash. “You’re officially off breakfast duty.”

Jack groaned and slung off his apron. He overhanded it at Merritt. Merritt caught it full in the face, eyes on the cards in Jack’s front pocket. Jack took them out and threw one at the box beside Dylan’s elbow.

“And no assaulting the blueberries!”

Jack ducked his head but he was smirking. He shuffled the cards. 

Pancakes seemed to be the magic food for Jack. It didn’t matter if it was blueberry, plain, chocolate. All of it was fair game. He’d eat them at any time of day—Dylan had found the kid at one thirty in the morning scarfing leftovers down cold—and with anything on top.

Merritt slathered ketchup on them once, to see how far it could go. Jack ate them in two minutes flat. 

When asked, his explanation was, “Do you know how many pancakes restaurants throw out every day? They’re full of carbs to keep you warm. Restaurant owners started packing them up for me so I didn’t have to dumpster dive.”

They’d put on an Oscar-worthy show of nonchalance and mild nodding and freaked out later. His crap childhood never got easier to hear. 

Merritt opened the morning paper he’d _borrowed_ from a vacationing family down the road and checked for any sign of their daring escape from the abandoned building. Nothing had been reported thus far. Ramses had _really_ good connections.

“Bacon or sausage with your pancakes, Merritt?”

“Is that even a question? I grew up in the Midwest—bacon.” A plate slid across the table. Steam curled under the newspaper. “Thanks, Dylan.”

“Your turn, Jack. Bacon or sausage?”

Merritt would never have noticed it if Jack’s hands hadn’t twitched a little. He glanced over the newspaper in time to see Jack pale.

Merritt stilled.

So did Jack.

“Jack,” Dylan prompted. “Make a choice, bud.”

Jack’s mouth worked. His brows pinched and then spread.

Dylan’s shoulders had tightened and Merritt knew the man could read the atmosphere of a room almost better than he could. He purposely wasn’t turning around now. The boy’s breathing sounded ragged and uneven. Sweat pooled on his hairline.

“I…I don’t…”

“Jack?”

“J-Just, uh, I guess…I’m not…s-s…yeah, sausage is g-good.”

Dylan forked some on a plate. Jack jumped up, grabbed the plate straight out of Dylan’s hand, and darted away before Merritt’s next breath. Dylan kept stirring pancake batter calmly. Merritt flipped a page.

At the distant sound of Jack’s door closing, all pretense dropped.

Dylan whirled, throwing an alarmed look at Merritt. Merritt mirrored it.

Shock stole their voice. A metallic crackle in the pan signaled Dylan’s bacon was burning but neither moved. They read the truth in each other’s eyes and hated it. Merritt swallowed.

“I recognize this,” he finally said.

“Do I want to know?”

“I think you already do.”

Dylan ran a hand down his face. He shut off the burner. “He’s too young to suffer from this.”

“Dylan. I did hypnosis therapy with POW’s after Iraq. _Everyone_ is too young for this.”

Worse than the cards was the fact they hadn’t noticed this innocuous, bleeding hole in Jack’s recovery. How many times had he stuttered during his turn at game nights and they all thought it was just fatigue?

Why did he never argue anymore when someone stole the shower before him, despite the pre-set schedule?

Why did it take him so long to choose clothes in the morning?

How _in the blazes_ had it not occurred to them that whenever they offered Jack any kind of choice, he never gave a verbal answer until this morning? Alma’s question from the night before floated back to Merritt…

_“I’m on a date with Dylan tonight. Help a girl out, Jack. Which dress?”_

_Alma held up a silver cocktail dress and a longer, midnight coloured gown. _

_Jack smiled from the doorway. “You’re asking me?”_

_“Allez. Which one is prettier?”_

_Jack shrugged. “Whichever one you like, I guess.”_

_“Yeah, but if you had to pick?”_

_Jack mulled it over, grey faced, and pointed to the gown. He tucked his hands back under his arms to hide a slight shake._

Merritt gazed at Dylan and saw the same memories from the past two weeks flash before his eyes.

“What if we can’t fix this?” Dylan whispered. He never looked as helpless as when his people were on the line.

“We caught it in time, Dylan.” Merritt sounded more assured than he felt. He shuffled cold pancakes around his plate. “Besides, I have a plan.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it to this story's end, thank you. Hope you enjoyed the ride!

_The floor was Antarctica. _

_This was the clearest thought in Jack’s brain. He had to be sitting on an ice flow. Frigid, unyielding. The heavy ice was even on his arms. His shoulders ached, a low breath of agony across his back. _

_Jack opened his eyes. _

_Apparently Antarctica was also an apartment so dismal it rivaled some of Brooklyn’s. It had zero furniture or windows and rat droppings in the corners. _

_Jack still thought the decor to his right was the most beautiful thing. _

_Lock picks hung on the wall._

_Neat. Polished. Organized by weight and tumbler structure. _

_Blood oozed from his back, his hands, but he shuffled forward anyway, on his knees. They trailed through a puddle of his own vomit. He ignored it to get at a small half diamond pick. _

_“Get out in the next ten minutes,” said the Voices, “and you can save your friends. You wouldn’t want them to die, now, would you?”_

_Jack’s breath caught._

_“It’s all down to you, Mr. Wilder.”_

_Then came spitting and jeering and lewd comments._

“Jack!”

_“It’s such an easy lock, Mr. Wilder. I can’t imagine why it’s not working. Why don’t you try another tension wrench? You can’t even choose the correct tool. Pity.”_

_“You’ll kneel before this is over.”_

“Get up, Jack!”

_“That’s the widest lock I’ve ever seen.”_

_“Ha! No wonder they called him a failure!”_

_“Lecherous child.”_

“Ja-ack!”

Jack, two weeks ago, would have come up swinging. Now he just lay still and hoped the intruder by his bed would go away. He still trembled from the nightmare and sweat soaked the front of his shirt.

Judging by the fact he now realized the figure was Merritt, the odds of said intruder going away were less than zero. Negative ten.

Merritt’s face was barely visible under a fedora and murky lighting, but even that didn’t hide the worry in his eyes. His hand found Jack’s shoulder. It was warm and kneaded into his skin a little.

Jack inhaled some steadying breaths. Merritt pulled the kicked blankets back up to his waist and patted Jack’s bony ribs.

“Come on. We have twenty minutes to do this.”

Jack wondered if he was still dreaming. “Do what?”

“I need your help to filch Alma’s tablet. It’s the only internet connection we got.”

“I…I am not stealing anything.”

Merritt’s brow disappeared under the hat brim. He hid his surprise under an exaggerated sigh. “I figured you’d say that. So I stole it.”

“What?” Jack sat up on his elbow. He squinted at the tablet, where Merritt had settled on the floor with his back to the bed, and the tiny white numbers. “It’s six forty in the morning.”

“Exactly. Alma wakes up like clockwork at seven.”

“Why are we online shopping? The credit card slip will give away what little protection we have at the moment. Ramses might have backed off but the FBI hasn’t.”

“That’s why Li let me use his.” Merritt held up a gold AmEx. ‘John Copperfield’ said the owner name.

Jack’s eyebrows shot up this time. “Is this a joke?”

“No.”

“Why can’t we just tell Alma?”

“Because she’ll be a huge blabbermouth.”

“No she won’t. She keeps a secret better than all of us combined. What are we even shopping for?”

Merritt twisted to catch Jack’s eye. Jack, muddled and still hunting for sharp knuckled men in the shadows of his bedroom, made the connection a staggering ten seconds later.

“Dylan’s birthday.”

“Bingo. I’m having whatever we pick shipped to a safety deposit box in the city.”

“How did you even find out the exact day? He only ever tells us the month.”

“Did you…did you just ask how I, Merritt McKinney, found out a personal detail about someone?”

Jack blew a noisy breath through his lips, admitting defeat. “I walked into that one.”

His forehead landed on the mattress by Merritt’s ear. It quivered under his nose, signalling Merritt squirming around. A slight pressure landed on Jack’s hair. He reached up and ran the fedora’s felt crease between his fingers. It was soft and smelled like Merritt’s aftershave. The leather band had nicks in it, the weathered watchtower of a boat after a typhoon.

The words caught up with him. Jack’s head jerked upwards.

“Whatever _we_ pick?”

“That’s right. You and I have to decide on—”

“_McKinney_!”

Merritt cringed. “Uh oh.”

Alma continued to rail, voice ever closer. Merritt pushed to his feet. He threw the tablet and credit card at Jack. “Quick! I’ll hold her off while you pick something.”

Jack stiffened. “I…I’m not sure I know—”

Merritt was out the door and down the hall. Jack stared at the screen. It was open on Amazon, cursor blinking at him in the search bar. Fresh options scrolled along the deals at the bottom.

Jack felt the walls of Antarctica closing in. Felt the cold. Felt the frustration. He’d never get out—his brief stint as someone important, a Horseman, was over. They knew he was a failure.

He’d never get out.

A sharp pain in Jack’s scalp alerted him to the fact he was pulling at it with his fingernails. He stared at the tablet. This wasn’t so hard. There were no wrong answers with this one…right? He couldn’t make a mistake.

_Who am I kidding—I can’t even pick a skeleton lock_.

He threw the tablet to the foot of the bed. The hat slipped down on one side.

If Jack wasn’t lost in tormented thoughts, he might have wondered why it had gone so quiet or the impeccable timing of Alma’s disruption. Or why she and Merritt were huddled at the crack in the door, exchanging fretful looks.

* * *

The first time, a day later, Jack noticed the deadbolt for the basement door was gone. A lonely hole stared at him as he wandered to breakfast alone. Everyone else had been roped into doing Bu Bu’s gardening with her.

He stared at that hole.

The hole and its mournful eye stared back.

He shrugged and shuffled into the kitchen. After plucking a bowl out of the cereal cabinet, he chose his favourite—Nesquick. Over half the box was already gone.

It thumped when he set it down.

“What the…?” Jack poured some into the bowl. 

The deadbolt tumbled out and crushed his chocolaty nectar.

Jack’s mouth dropped. “You have got to be kidding me.”

He rushed to the refrigerator and retrieved the jug of milk. Feeling stupid, Jack put his ear to the side. He shook the jug.

Sure enough—something clinked against the side.

Jack poured the milk over his cereal and out slid two picks. They were the perfect size and weight for the locked deadbolt. Jack’s hands lowered to his sides, slowly, dread-filled.

It went so quiet he could hear Bu Bu’s carriage clock ticking on the living room mantle.

Not once in forty five seconds did he blink. His nostrils flared. He stared at the picks spread over the deadbolt, mixed with soggy Nesquick. The mixture was drenched, irretrievable. Couldn’t be restored.

His nose wrinkled with a quiet huff.

Jack dumped the cereal, deadbolt, picks, and all, into the trash.

* * *

The next time, Jack was hopping out of the shower.

He picked up his towel—

_Shring-therk_!

—And the deadbolt fell out of its folds and onto the tile.

Dylan, coming in the front door a few hours later, found it on the stoop, smashed to pieces. A hammer sat beside it. 

* * *

“Wha—This can’t be real.”

Alma’s smug glow was visible even in the dim bedroom lighting. She stretched out on her side, next to Dylan, elbow propped and head in her palm. His wide eyes scanned the newspaper article rapid fire. 

“Read ‘em and weep,” she said in a sloppy American accent.

“But…how…this footage…”

“Is from a security camera across the street from that abandoned building. Ramses got cocky. They disabled every camera except for this one. It was put there a few days ago by university students studying traffic patterns.”

Dylan put the newspaper down and laughed. And laughed some more.

“We caught them, Dylan.” Alma planted a smiling kiss on his lips. “There was no footage of what they did to Jack, in the building, but shooting at an Interpol agent in broad daylight—not to mention when Daniel waved out a window and they proceeded to blow us up—was plenty.”

A great shout went up and the other Horsemen rushed into the room to see “where the fire is,” as Jack put it.

Daniel, wearing nothing but his boxers and a T-shirt, scrubbed at his eyes. “What fresh horror is going on here?”

“We’re free!” Dylan thrust the article at Merritt. Alma laughed. “We can go home!”

The other three huddled around the newspaper, reading in strung silence how the FBI worked with Interpol to take down an active ‘terror cell’ in Boston. Every last one of them. Evidence was found in a hotel that they’d planned more attacks and been responsible for many on other magicians.

All ten active Ramses members had been given thirty year sentences.

Merritt glanced up. He took his hat off. “This is real?”

Alma nodded. “I cuffed them myself. That’s where I’ve been all week.”

Merritt’s lips relaxed into a forest fire smile that spread all the way up his face. He threw his hat in the air. Daniel exploded into a whooshing sigh that would’ve lifted the hair off his head if he still had any.

Jack just stared at Dylan, stunned.

Dylan got off the bed and clasped both of the boy’s shoulders. “It’s over, Jack.”

“It’s over.” Jack unwound under Dylan’s hands. “It’s…over?”

“Yeah.”

If Dylan had a year to guess Jack’s response, he still never would have.

Jack’s eyes welled up.

He opened his arms and pulled a dazed Dylan in for a hug. Daniel and Merritt stopped, mouths slack. Dylan immediately embraced back.

Merritt made a comment about this bedroom getting a little too crowded. Jack laughed and the bobbing of it against Dylan’s ribs made him smile.

And he thought they might be alright after all.

* * *

“Aaahhhh. Home sweet…observatory.”

Daniel rolled his eyes and stole the popcorn bowl from Merritt’s hands. Someone had left a jug of homemade lemonade in the fridge and the mentalist poured four glasses.

“No Alma tonight?” asked Jack.

Dylan settled on the armoire and shook his head. “She’s off in Paris to give her report. Bu Bu and Li went with her, just in case.”

They collapsed around the TV, jet lagged and exhausted. A month since this fiasco began and Jack was glad to see it ended.

Merritt held up his glass. “To a testosterone night in, then.”

“Can’t it at least be liquor for a toast?” Daniel frowned at his cup.

Jack took a swig of his. “I’m tired enough as is.”

Dylan shook his head, fond and exasperated. His eyes crinkled. “To freedom.”

They sobered. By some unspoken consensus, they waited for Jack to raise his eyes from the floor and lift his cup. Stained glass, jagged scars appeared when his sweater cuff slipped down.

“To freedom,” said Jack.

They drank and then Dylan slipped in some Julia Child biopic because _he would_. Merritt ended up stretched on the couch, feet propped in Daniel’s lap and head on the arm of the couch. The observatory was quiet—they had the whole place to themselves.

Jack, however, found his eyes drifting every few minutes. He curled up in the chair, shivering, and wondered who had turned down the heat. Dylan threw a blanket at him.

“Thanks. But I’m heading to bed.”

Jack waved at their chorus of goodnights. Merritt threw some popcorn at him for old times’ sake.

Jack made it to the bottom of the staircase for their living quarters upstairs before he realized his tongue felt thick. The floor lurched.

_I know this feeling_. _I know this taste._

Sound fuzzed out. Jack grappled for the banister.

“Guys? I think…I can’t stand…up…”

No sound. Jack’s eyes fluttered.

_Not again._

But how…? Then he remembered the lemonade. Nobody had been here to make it—it had been planted.

The rumble of a large truck made the window panes tremble.

Heavy boots burst through the front door. Their distant pounding sent an icicle of fear through Jack’s chest. Heart thudding, he crawled for the trick storage closet. He shuffled behind boxes of handcuffs and prosthetics and prayed they didn’t find him.

The room blacked out.

* * *

They weren’t there.

When Jack awoke, he gaped at the empty living room. The empty chairs in front of the TV. The empty glasses on the table. Dylan’s movie was still playing.

_I’ve been out less than twenty minutes._

But the other Horsemen may as well have been on the moon for all Jack knew of their whereabouts.

They weren’t _there_.

Jack ran to the front door, following the trail of overturned tables and coat racks. The Horsemen had been mildly coherent, then, to put up even this minimal fuss.

There was only one road in and out of the observatory property.

If he could catch them before they hit the main drag…

Jack clenched his teeth and sprinted down the gravel. His shoes went _thwapthwapthwap _and his heart beat a tattoo. Every breath was a flare of agony from his heart to the hot prickle in his hands.

_Not again. Not again._

His wrists ached with remembered pain. Jack was a frenzied blur. Not even an Olympic sprinter could catch a moving vehicle—and Jack knew it.

He still ran with everything he had.

Darkness had fallen over Greenwich. Jack’s eyes were tuned for the flash of vehicles where the highway met the back country lane. Instead, an orange glow lit up the sky.

A patch of black ice met Jack’s shoes and he tripped. He looked down. A _huge _patch of black ice, one he hadn’t seen coming.

Ramses apparently hadn’t seen it either. A delivery truck with that same flower shop name printed on the side sat grill-first in a ditch—

Completely enveloped in flames.

Jack ran to the cab window. The driver and another man were crushed, dead. The air bags hadn’t engaged. Jack recognized them as the owners of the Voices. If adrenaline wasn’t swimming in Jack’s system, he might have laughed that Ramses had planned for everything but England’s crisp weather.

Frantic shouts echoed even over the crackle of fire. Gasoline leaked onto the ground. Jack had to climb to reach the double doors, tilted towards the sky as the van was.

“I’m here!” He pounded on the doors. “Guys! I’m here!”

The harried voices changed to jubilant ones.

“Jack!” came Daniel’s muffled yell.

“Everyone okay?”

“Other than being drugged, flung into a metal plated wall, and trapped in a burning flower truck,” called Merritt, “we’re fantastic. Dylan’s always telling me I should stop and smell the roses.”

“I’ll get you out.” Jack dared a half grin. “Should be easy…”

His face dropped. His hands fell away from the door as if it had bitten him.

The door was dead bolted. A sliding bolt and a wide, short lock. A fifteen second job for a lock picker.

Jack stared at it.

“You’re the perfect one to _not_ get caught, really.” Merritt was still rambling. “Your skills are the most useful in this situation—”

“Maybe I can break it down.”

Everyone silenced at Jack’s clipped voice.

Flames licked at the truck. The tires had already melted and still it climbed. Jack sweat outside, even with no coat on. He couldn’t imagine the heat inside this steel trap.

“There’s going to be an explosion soon,” Dylan shouted. “We don’t have that kind of time. Not to mention we are all mildly sedated.”

_I don’t even have picks._

Merritt could read minds even behind five inch steel doors, apparently. “Look in your pocket!”

Jack reached into the front of his jeans and, sure enough, there was a lock pick set. Betrayal stung his eyes. Someone must have slipped it into his pocket this afternoon, after clearing customs.

“I’m going to kill you guys for this.”

“You might get your wish,” said Merritt.

“You can do this, Jack!” At a scratching sound, Jack realized Daniel was palming the door. “We don’t have much time.”

Ramses was dead…but they hadn’t lied.

_It _is_ up to me to get them out._

His hands shook and he wished to die right there to escape this torment. That he could perish in their place.

He eyed the lock.

Fingers a quivering blur, Jack inserted a tension wrench inside the lock. Then a rake pick. It wouldn’t work. He knew it wouldn’t. Nothing ever worked.

The pick snapped.

“I can’t do it,” he wailed.

“You are the smartest guy I know.” Dylan breathed hard. “Try another one!”

A scream erupted and Jack knew they had minutes. Fire was in the truck. Stomping ensued, the other three trying to put out the fires.

Then silence.

“Guys?” He shook the doors. “_Guys_!”

Nothing.

Jack leaned his head on the door and sobbed. He pounded the metal.

_I’ll try and try and never get out. _He had failed. Again.

He was back in that hell and Antarctica was melting. He’d never get out.

“I’m sorry. I just…I didn’t mean for this to…”

_How did I get so screwed up?_

He fingered the lock. Heat licked his boots but Jack couldn’t find it in himself to care. He closed his eyes. Smoke wafted in his nose.

It reminded him of pancakes. Of Daniel’s hand carding through Jack’s hair when he thought he was asleep. Of Dylan’s hugs. Of Merritt throwing blueberries at them all. Their triumphant faces when one of them cleaned house in poker.

Jack’s eyes snapped open.

He took out a different pick. Jack forced himself to breathe through his nose, calm his motions down to something fine-tuned.

This pick slid in like gravy. It gave just enough resistance for Jack to feel the tumblers and where they loosened. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he didn’t need his smoke-blurred eyes. Picking locks was a lover’s game, light in touch and guided by whispers.

_Cl-cring!_

Jack dropped the picks in shock.

Woozy with smoke, he slid the doors back. The other Horsemen lay on their backs, black with soot.

One by one, Jack dragged them out, coughing and wheezing. He set them in the recovery position on the opposite side of the road. His head spun. The last person to be dragged out was Merritt.

Jack had only just cleared the road before the truck exploded. Jack threw himself over the other three.

It seemed to last forever. Shards blew over their head and into the field almost half a kilometer away. An intense, inferno wave rolled over their backs.

“This look’s…fami’l’r,” slurred Merritt. The man frowned. “Lost my hat again.”

“I think it just exploded,” said Daniel.

Merritt sniffed. “Pity. And these firecrackers suck.”

Sirens sounded in the distance. Merritt, despite his joking tone, shook from head to toe. He reached up and kissed the crown of Jack’s head.

“You done good, kid.”

“Jack.” Dylan blinked up at him. “Thanks for the save. I knew you could do it.”

“Anytime.” This time Jack’s smile was full. “And happy birthday.”

* * *

They’d landed a three-for-one room package. Dylan didn’t know how the Eye had managed that.

They were at a local hospital for overnight observation, recovering from minor burns and smoke inhalation. Daniel and Merritt slept in the beds across from Dylan. Oxygen tanks puffed in clean air through plastic masks.

He hadn’t seen Jack yet but a humming by the vending machine outside and several cards thrown through the door reassured Dylan.

It was a full hour before he noticed the birthday present tucked beside his elbow.

The wrapping was brown paper, looped with a red velvet ribbon. Simple. Honest. Dylan already knew who it was from.

The first thing to tumble out was a card. The Jack of diamonds.

The second was a…

“A Chinese puzzle box?”

Dylan turned the thing around in his hands. It had an Amazon sticker on it, contradicting his hypothesis of Bu Bu’s influence. Symbols on the varying sized blocks were in different languages.

On a hunch, Dylan twisted them in order of historical period, oldest to newest. It went from Phoenician to English.

The box sprang open. Dylan’s eyes teared up.

Inside sat a pile of photographs. There had to be over two dozen:

Jack pouring whip cream into Merritt’s hat while he slept, Daniel trying to impress Alma with a new trick, Dylan cooking, Jack flipping a pancake while Merritt made a funny face in the background, Daniel asleep with his head on Dylan’s shoulder, Thaddeus in a victorious pose while everyone groaned at the Monopoly board, Dylan kissing Alma, Jack in one of his full bellied laughs…

Dylan turned the blocks over. He chuckled, a wet sound that fogged his mask. All the blocks said the same word in their respective languages:

_Family_.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Written February 2017.


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